It's late August and you've just returned home. With a heaviness in your step, you open your front door, kick off your shoes, drop your backpack by your bedroom door, and flop onto the couch just in time to catch the opening of your favorite show. Your parents, who won't be home for a little while, don't really get your taste in television these days but honestly, when have they ever? There's something spellbinding and exhilarating about this show and the way all the girls confront unspeakable evils alongside the daily struggles of school and romance. Something speaks to you, something you can't entirely name, but it's real and visceral and it's waiting for you there on the TV every day after school. It's late August, the year is 1999, and you're watching Sailor Moon. 

This month, Sara and Runa talk about Life After Magic (2022), a game packed to the brim with 90's style and overflowing with love and admiration for Magical Girl stories. While Sailor Moon is the most obvious point of reference here, this game weaves in so many different influences from late 90's and early 00's anime and manga from Tokyo Mew Mew to Yu-Gi-Oh and beyond. The game centers around Akiko, a 22 year old high school dropout who was once Sentinel Starlight, leader of a magical girl group and alien princess here on Earth. Unfortunately saving the world doesn't pay very well and also employers don't exactly consider it a transferable skill, so Akiko works at a makeup counter in the Glamour Pop cosmetics store. Dealing with customers every day is so draining she barely has time to do anything even remotely social – most workdays, she winds down by watching TV with Allistar, her talking cat and magical mascot character. Then, in a development that calls back loud and clear to the first episode of Sailor Moon that aired on the Toonami block in 1999, a gorgeous (and kinda mean) Girlboss CEO arrives to announce a new Sentimentality line of makeup based on the theme colors of the Sentinels. Shortly after, Akiko realizes that her magic is weakening and Allistar calls an emergency meeting... which also forces Akiko to admit that she hasn't been keeping in touch with the other sentinels and lost their numbers. Cell Phones wouldn't be common for a few more years, after all.

This launches us into the core of Life After Magic as Akiko manages her time, the stress of her day job, and tries to both reconnect with her former teammates while solving the crisis of magic's disappearance. Each former sentinel has a different perspective on Magic and what their time as Magical Girls really meant (especially given the loaded gender of the term). It's great to see both the characters and narrative unpack 90's nostalgia and the impact magical girl shows and shoujo manga have had on so many of us especially in the queer community. There's also a lot of depth and tiny secrets to uncover in this game, including secret endings and a really great cast of romanceable characters. Also, Akiko's Ex is there and he's the best/the worst. You really have to play to understand.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider writing us a review on your podcast platform of choice! You can always support us directly on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where you will get access to all of our bonus episodes past and present, including our recent episode on Uma Musume and the legacy of Stat Builders & Raising Sims!

A NEW ERA OF HEROES!

A WORLD EMBATTLED!

THE PASSION OF RIVALRY AND HEATED DRAMA BETWEEN MEN!

The sirens sing like soft jazz pumped through shopping mall speakers. Children look on, their eyes gleaming with excitement to see a glimpse of the masked heroes who will defeat the evil, rampaging Kaiju. Every day, the heroes will kill parents, children, and lovers... perhaps even their own. The crowds always cheer when the siren plays, even when the heroes have no heart for cheering.

This month, Sara and Runa rush into the world of superheroes, kaiju, and conquering aliens from beyond the stars in the tokusatsu-inspired BL, uuultraC! Set in 1969, uuultraC takes us to a world where humans can become Kaiju and heroes are tasked with killing them publicly and without mercy. Becoming a Kaiju is fairly simple - the infection can spread through contact with Kaiju blood or sex with a Kaiju, and then it's as simple as raising your heartrate high enough that your body twists and transforms into a gigantic, monstrous form. Sometimes it happens when a Kaiju is enraged and lashes out in fury. Sometimes it happens when a defenseless Kaiju is attacked by a wild animal. No matter the case, their sentence is death, to be carried out as soon as the hero Icarus arrives. 

Adelta's uuultraC(2022) takes us through the story of three different protagonists and their relationships to Superheroes, Kaiju, gender, sexuality, the expectations of society, and their own futures. Shoutarou has always longed to be an actor in superhero dramas, but is that even possible for him after he's splashed with Kaiju blood? His boyfriend, Kozuka, has also been disappearing more and more recently, leaving Shoutarou wondering where the two of them really stand. Choutsugai is haunted by the memory of a young girl he fell in love with on the set of a movie when they were both children. As an adult, however, he discovers that the Belle he loves so dearly is Suzu Isshiki, a drag queen and Kaiju who wages a brutal war against the heroes. Standing above them all is Juurou Sayashi, the current suit actor for Sun-mask Icarus and the star of the hero shows that inspire and entertain the nation. He has always been the perfect, stoic hero... even though his true wish is to live quietly with his childhood friend, Yomi. Yomi, however, is hiding a secret that sits at the core of the conflict between Kaiju and Superheroes. Each of their stories explores the ways in which stigmatization and marginalization, especially of queerness, resonates with the stylized and idealized conflicts that play out between Heroes and Kaiju.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more!

Content Warnings for this episode:

Discussion of homophobia (internalized and otherwise), transphobia, sexual assault including child sexual abuse, and gore.

Locally produced, hand-crafted, small batch, non-GMO, organic (or maybe silicon-based?) foods are often touted as the pinnacle of health and nutrition. So, please enjoy this selection of small indie visual novel we're bringing you today, freshly delivered for your consumption. You simply will not find this level of toxic yuri, this high a concentration of charm and potency, or a mouthfeel anywhere near as satisfying in those visual novels you get at the big box grocery stores. They do sell them at grocery stores, right? This metaphor falls apart completely otherwise. 

This month, Sara and Runa embark upon their fifth Indie Visual Novel Compilation Track episode! Every six months, our hosts select a heaping handful of Indie VNs that they've read and enjoyed to tell you, dear listener, about the joys and delights you can find in indie games. Many of our entries this time are also from very cool Game Jams, and looking through the catalog of a jam's entries can be a great way to find more games to satisfy your cravings. 

In these Indie Game Compilation Track episodes we want to highlight some of the incredible indie VNs we've played recently and get people excited about the things happening in Indie Visual Novel development spaces. We want to not only showcase the amazing breadth of work coming from Indie developers but also talk about some of our favorite games, many of which touch on subjects, characters, and experiences we rarely get the chance to see in games from larger studios. You can find a list of each game we played below and we encourage you to play along with us, and go searching for other Indie visual novels as well!  

Most of these games are free and if not, fairly cheap (though please tip the creators if you are able), and you can read most of them inside of an hour or two. In fact, we want YOU, dear listener, to pick at least one of these games to play after you listen, and then tell us about it! You can also check our Patreon, where listeners and patrons can submit either a short audio clip or a few sentences telling us about an Indie VN you've played and enjoyed recently! We may even include your submission on our next Indie VN Compilation Track episode (only if you want, that is). 

Games discussed in this episode:

• Comme Tu Veux (00:06:23) 
• Our Bad Ending (00:18:33)
• Spring in Her Step (00:22:41)
• Threads of Magic (00:28:18) 
• her tears were my light (00:39:02)
• A Circle of Charity (00:43:13)
• Neurokino Retrograde (00:48:32) 
• Märchen Line (01:01:14)
• A Date with Death (01:16:38)
• The Final Prize is Soup (01:26:25)
• Good Lord! Everyone at the Reunion for my Religious All-Girls School is a Trans Man... And they're Hot?! (01:40:11)

And also, these two Listeners submissions!

• Pinfeather - Submitted by Emrys (00:33:21)
• Murders on the Yangtze River - Submitted by Raven (00:58:57)

And thus, I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil. 

- Shakespeare's Richard III, Act 1: Scene 3

History is, in its mystery, endless. No matter how much detail we might glean from contemporary accounts or archaeological digs, there will always be shadows beyond the reach of candlelight. Do you ever wonder, on a ruin's precipice, what sadness or joy might have filled its halls in days gone by? What secrets did they whisper, never recorded in anything but their own faded memory? Did they conspire? Fear for their lives? Resent their fate? Embrace the era? Have some hot gay sex in the Cloister? Truly, History is endless.

This month, Sara and Runa bring you the longest episode of Say it in Red to date as they discuss Misericorde volumes 1 & 2! Set in Linbarrow Abbey during 1482 & 83, near the end of the Wars of the Roses, Misericorde centers around the murder of Sister Catherine, a Benedictine Nun. The Mother Superior, fearing that she cannot trust her congregation, opens the cell of the Anchoress. In Benedictine Abbeys, the Anchorite or Anchoress was someone who swore special oaths before being sealed away in a small cell, isolated from the world and spending their days studying scripture and illuminating manuscripts. Linbarrow's Anchoress, Hedwig, then becomes our unwilling Detective. Forced to investigate, unsure of her place in the abbey, unfamiliar with the social norms and practices of her fellow nuns, and completely out of her depth, Hedwig stumbles about through the dark chasing the specter of Catherine's influence. In volume 1, Hedwig familiarizes herself with the other residents of the abbey and frequently recoils in terror when she learns of how lax everyone's schedules are, how loosely they adhere to the strictures of the rules of St. Benedict, and whatever those two women were doing just before she barged into the room? Then, in volume 2, Hedwig discovers exactly what those two women were doing just before she barged into the room and this, along with some other developments, sends her into an existential crisis. Please join Sara and Runa as they discuss all the funky little nuns of Linbarrow, their theories about the mysteries afoot, and rank their favorite and most suspicious nuns.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more! 

And please remember, all patrons can send us in your Indie VN recommendations or tell us about an Indie VN you've played and enjoyed recently - you might end up on our next episode! Our next Indie VN Compiliation Track episode is coming up in June, but if you miss that one then no worries - we'll have an other coming in December. Please tell us about an Indie VN you've played and enjoyed recently!

Dear Listeners, 

Thank you for the abundance of questions you've sent to us regarding our time with Fate/Stay Night. Please join us on the empty city streets beneath a flickering convenience store sign tonight as we answer your queries, demonstrate our power, and drop a few hints about our upcoming schedule as well. Take care on your way home tonight, as well... I've heard that urban fantasy can be incredibly dangerous for a protagonist such as yourself. 

This month, Sara and Runa join returning guest MK to conclude our coverage of Fate/Stay Night with a pile of listener letters and questions, alongside a decidedly nonlinear discussion of Fate/Zero. What historical or legendary figure would our hosts summon as a servant in the holy grail war? What has Nasu said about the process of writing Fate/Stay Night over the years? What possibility is there of hearing a Say it in Red episode on Tsukihime? And most of all, what did Sara think about Waver in Fate/Zero? These questions, and many more, are all answered in this episode. As a result, please consider this a blanket warning for spoilers of all Fate/Stay Night routes as well as for Fate/Zero.

As we mention in the episode, please be on the lookout for our new schedule which we'll be releasing shortly after this episode. Patrons get to see our full schedule for the remainder of the year, while all listeners are able to see an abbreviated schedule covering the next few months. If you like the show and would like to support us, please consider leaving us a five-star review on your platform of choice, and if you can write a review please write in to tell us which servant YOU would summon in the holy grail war. You can also support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/sayitinred where you'll find all of our bonus episodes, including the spoilercast episodes mentioned here and our latest bonus episode in which Sara and Runa dive into the world of Fate figure collection!

The interviews mentioned in the episode were originally in Japanese and fan translations are available at the following links:

• https://jcrcomicarts.wordpress.com/2021/03/28/type-moon-ace-full-type-moon-ace-vol-13-interview-fully-translated/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Tsukihime/comments/pbhqg5/nasu_and_takeuchis_tsukihime_remake_launch/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Tsukihime/comments/pcei90/nasu_and_takeuchis_tsukihime_remake_launch/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Tsukihime/comments/pe56vw/nasu_and_takeuchis_tsukihime_remake_launch/

Dear Listeners,

I've been having nightmares recently. Maybe I shouldn't call them nightmares, but it's hard to describe them in any other way. Each night, I fall asleep – or at least, I think I'm falling asleep – only to see the silhouette of a tall, beautiful woman open my door right before I lose consciousness. The next thing I remember is walking through my old high school and finding one of my classmates drinking another girl's blood. Terror seizes me, because I forgot to study for my blood drinking exam. I run from the room,  mostly to give the girls their privacy, and fall right into a massive pit of worms. Dread arrests my limbs, because they're all sour gummy worms and now my clothes are covered in tart sugar and sticky goo. Also all of these gummy worms are dirty now and that's just adding to the stress. Around this time, a writhing shadow covers me and I awaken in a cold sweat, look up, and see the flowchart for Heaven's Feel open on the monitor in front of me.

On this episode, Sara, Runa, and returning guest MK complete their reading of Fate/Stay Night with the Heaven's Feel route! This route immediately diverges from the others, but still remains close to the Fate route until a scene in the Matou family basement pulls us deeper into the literal pit of Sakura's trauma and despair. When Sakura confides in Shirou about the abuse she's suffered at her family home, he takes her to stay at his house to protect her from Shinji and their terrifying grandfather, Zouken. When a mysterious, eldritch Shadow begins stalking the city and defeating servants, Shirou and Saber start investigating only to cross paths with a new servant, True Assassin, at the Ryuudo Temple. While Shirou faces off against Zouken, the master of True Assassin, Saber fights his servant only to lose not to Assassin, but the mysterious Shadow. Meanwhile, Sakura has been suffering from sudden intense fevers and bouts of weakness and Shirou encourages her to remain at his home and rest. When Shinji attempts to take Sakura back to the Matou home, Rin and Shirou try to protect her only to end up facing Rider, now revealed to have been Sakura's servant all along. From there the Shadow continues its rampage, Zouken continues scheming, Shirou continues experiencing unnerving nightmares, and Sakura's condition continues to deteriorate. The final secrets of the Holy Grail War come to light in this final route, as Illya reveals her connection to Shirou, Rin and Sakura reconnect as sisters, and Angra Mainyu properly takes the stage at last.

Fate/Stay Night Q&A Episode: 

Our April Episode will be a huge Q&A Episode about the whole of Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero questions are up for grabs as well! You can send us your Fate/Stay Night questions here and as long as you get them to us before our April Episode, we'll do our best to answer as many as possible!

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more!

Also, you can check out our guest, MK, experiencing even more Visual Novel excitement on the Moonshot Network where they're currently reading Virtue's Last Reward for the first time and will continue reading Visual Novels (and adjacent media) Saturdays on twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork!

Content Warnings for this episode:

Discussions of Sexual Assault
Mentions of Child Sexual Abuse
Insects, especially worms and body horror related to Worms, Insects, and Parasites

Dear Listeners,

Recently I witnessed a devastating battle in my dreams. On the floor of a figure collecting convention, an absurdly wealthy collector was completely annihilating everyone in a quiz competition about rare and obscure scale figures. Talented sculptors, award-winning painters, and industry darlings all wept in lamentation as their knowledge proved insufficient to compete with the golden-haired man who owned not only the first Saber Lily Distant Avalon figure ever produced, but also prototypes of promotional figures including the solid gold Gundam RX-78-2 as well as every single Winter edition Hatsune Miku scale figure ever produced. Then a guy who does garage kits came in and absolutely bodied him in the last round, it was incredible.

...Wait, actually I think that might have happened for real.

This month, Runa and Sara return to Fate/Stay Night with guest MK to read through the game's second route: Unlimited Blade Works. While the Fate route left them wanting more emotional resonance and less Shirou, the Unlimited Blade Works route delivers both in spades. Diverging from the Fate Route when Shirou uses a command seal to prevent Saber from attacking Archer and Rin, Unlimited Blade Works sees the two masters work much more closely together as they navigate their growing affections for one another while the Holy Grail War is going, admittedly, Pretty Bad for them. Not only do they suffer a devastating loss followed by an abrupt betrayal, the eighth servant Gilgamesh makes a much earlier entrance and quickly dominates the field. With Saber lost, Archer gone, and no command seals left, Rin and Shirou struggle to survive together as they piece together the mystery of Archer's identity, Shirou's future, and the magic that could help them win the Holy Grail War: Unlimited Blade Works.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more!

Also, you can check out our guest, MK, experiencing even more Visual Novel excitement on the Moonshot Network where they're currently reading Virtue's Last Reward for the first time and will continue reading Visual Novels (and adjacent media) Saturdays on twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork!

Dear Listeners,

It has been ten years since that calamity. Though you survived, the memory of flame-scorched rubble haunts your dreams each night. Closure slips away from you in the vagaries of time and, a decade on, you settle back into a relatively peaceful daily routine. It would be truly terrible if you were to die multiple times in one night through no fault of your own. It would really suck if you got pulled into a death game that had an unnerving connection to the most traumatic moment of your childhood. If something that awful happened you'd probably at least want some kind of good fortune to balance it all out. Maybe getting to know a cool knight with a sick sword or something. Yeah, a cool sword could make this all alright.

This week we begin our four episode series on Fate/Stay Night, a tremendously popular and influential Visual Novel from Type-Moon and the first main entry into the vast and sprawling Fate series. Sara and Runa are joined by friend, fellow podcaster, and Fate enjoyer MK as the three of them begin unpacking the massive warehouse of material that is Fate/Stay Night (2004). Reading along in the recent remaster (2024) which is based on Fate/Stay Night's Realta Nua release (2007), this episode focuses on the Fate route which is the standard first route players experience when booting up the game. In this route, we initially follow the prologue and Rin Tohsaka, a highschooler and mage who summons a Heroic Spirit, a Servant who occupies a special Class and will be her chess piece within the Holy Grail War. After a few hours with Rin though, we shift to our protagonist's perspective: Shirou Emiya is a fairly normal high school boy apart from how he was the sole survivor of a catastrophic fire 10 years ago, and the fact that he, too, is a mage. He can only use reinforcement or strengthening magic though, which he employs to repair broken space heaters and the like for his school. One night while Shirou is at school after dark, however, he's cornered by a man in blue spandex with a giant red spear who kills him dead. It's alright, Shirou gets better - unfortunately his assailant follows him to his home where Shirou staggers backwards and accidentally summons a Servant, Saber. Looking up at this majestic woman clad in a knight's silver armor in the moonlight, Shirou enters the Holy Grail War without fully understanding how, why, or what he's supposed to do in this situation.

The Fate Route of Fate/Stay Night focuses on establishing the core ideas of the game and its world, particularly surrounding Servants, Mages, and the Holy Grail War. A real, powerful magical artifact manifests within Fuyuki City and provides the power to summon Heroic Spirits of past Kings, Champions, Gods, Demons, or even Fictional characters from the past, present, or even future. These Heroic Spirits conceal their identity and use the moniker of their summoned Class as a pseudonym - Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. Only a Servant may touch the Holy Grail, and only one Master & Servant pair may use its power to grant their deepest wish. In the Fate Route, we also see the game's first romance play out between Shirou and Saber with mixed results. In spite of its shortcomings, Fate introduces a wealth of information and details which we'll be carrying forward into our next episodes on the remaining routes of the game. 

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more!

Also, you can check out our guest, MK, experiencing even more Visual Novel excitement on the Moonshot Network where they're

Video Games. For years, we have wondered: What are they? Where do they come from? And what do they want from us? Today, we have answers for you... answers that would delight even that strictest of industry philosophers: Sonic the Hedgehog. These are shorter games, far less hardware intensive than the latest AAA titles, and made by passionate developers. In fact, the only thing that might not satisfy Sonic's demands is that indie developers aren't always paid more to work less, but maybe by telling you about these Indie Visual Novels we played, we can encourage more people to send some money toward these incredible games.

This month, as is our semi-annual tradition, Sara and Runa each talk about a handful of indie visual novels they've played recently, each with its own incredible style, story, and impact. Some of these games are too short to warrant a full episode of the show, but honestly it's a struggle to keep ourselves from talking about each one for a full hour because they're just that good.

In these Indie Game Compilation Track episodes, which we do at least twice each year, we want to highlight some of the incredible indie VNs we've played recently and get people excited about the things happening in Indie Visual Novel development spaces. We want to not only showcase the amazing breadth of work coming from Indie developers but also talk about some of our favorite games, many of which touch on subjects, characters, and experiences we rarely get the chance to see in games from larger studios. You can find a list of each game we played below and we encourage you to play along with us, and go searching for other Indie visual novels as well! 

Most of these games are free and if not, fairly cheap (though please tip the creators if you are able), and you can read most of them inside of an hour or two. In fact, we want YOU, dear listener, to pick at least one of these games to play after you listen, and then tell us about it!

Games included in this episode:

• Stillwater by Studio Clump (00:04:30)
• May I take Your Order by Alexis Royce (00:10:27)
• Someone Stole MY LUNCH by Studio Clump (00:17:35)
• Mushroom Musume by Mortally Moonstruck Games (00:24:05)
• Penultima by Zetareishi (00:34:43)
• Doomsday Dreamgirl by Nadia Nova (00:46:35)
• Sink Your Teeth by SuperBiasedGary (00:54:36)
• He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me by Taylor McCue (01:01:10)
• Bad Faith by Mado (01:14:07)
• Dahlia by Crystal Game Works (01:23:06)

And we also mentioned...

• Rituals in the Dark by ebi-hime (01:30:20)
• Life after Magic by Chiraishi Games (01:29:21)

Dear Listeners,

Have you ever felt, particularly in late November when the rain picks up and keeps you housebound, that you are trapped in a strange house full of people you don't entirely know? In many ways, the distance between holiday revelry and horrifying mystery is smaller than we like to think. What would happen if all of our Thanksgiving reunions took place on an isolated, stormbound island? Would everyone in attendance keep a level head if a gramophone announced the most sordid sins of their past? If nothing else, you could take solace in knowing that it would be difficult for your own holiday gatherings to turn out as badly as those on Soldier Island in Agatha Christie's influential closed circle mystery, And Then There Were None.

And what better way to experience this book, the practical foundation and inspiration for so many mysteries and visual novels, than to force one unwitting Umineko fan to read it, stop before the final culprit reveal, and then deliver all of her thoughts and theories on the air for everyone to enjoy. That's exactly what happened in this episode - Sara, along with Umineko reading guests KT Kelly and Raven, found out that Runa had never read And Then There Were None (despite having read about a dozen other Christie novels even as early as middle school). So really, there was nothing else to do but to give Runa her assignment, listen to her theories, and then see how she reacts to the final culprit reveal live on the air.

You can even read all of Runa's Culprit Theories, including some truly wild things that didn't make it onto the episode!

As we mentioned here, you can also Submit a short audio clip telling us about an Indie VN you've played, and we'll be including as many of those clips as possible in our upcoming Indie VN compilation track episode coming out in December! 

This is a public release of a previous Patreon-exclusive episode! You can, and we hope that you will, support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for as little as $3 a month you can get access to over four years of bonus content, along with advance schedules to let you know what we're reading in the future! And as always, if you enjoy our show please tell your friends and give us a rating and review wherever you listen.